If you’ve been keeping up to date with what’s been happening these past few days, you may have been left completely baffled by Trump’s latest display of what has been his characteristic combination of self-aggrandizing rhetoric and utter buffoonery. He recently declared publicly that he aims to “help” the inhabitants of Gaza by effectively ethnically cleansing them and forcing them into exile to various other Arab nations, particularly Egypt and Jordan.

Trump, sitting next to Netanyahu, went on to describe the utter devastation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, while somehow forgetting to identify Israel as the guilty party that is responsible for all the death and destruction. He openly called for US “ownership” of the Gaza Strip in an effort to “rebuild it.” Of course, from Trump’s perspective, this would mean Palestinian family homes and mosques are replaced with MacDonald’s and casinos. Nothing transcendental shall remain.

As per a CNN report that was released not long after this brazen and delusional admission of his goals, it would appear that even Trump’s own inner circle was not apprised of this grandiose plan of his:

One adviser on Middle East issues had not heard the proposal until Trump raised it during his news conference. The official described themselves as stunned.

 

But others said Trump had run the idea by people in the days ahead of the Netanyahu talks. His Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who visited Gaza last week, returned to Washington with a dire impression of the devastation he witnessed, conveying to Trump and later to reporters a view that it was no longer habitable.

 

“It is the buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities there whatsoever, no working water, electric, gas, nothing. God knows what kind of disease might be festering there,” Witkoff told reporters Tuesday. “So when the president talks about cleaning it out, he talks about making it habitable. And this is a long range plan.”

As is to be expected, the Arab nations, including Egypt and Jordan, practically all of which are American vassal states, have vehemently rejected such a “generous offer.” Even among the Trumpists, there have been efforts at damage control. Secretary of state Marco Rubio described it as a “temporary” measure, an interim period during which “debris was cleared and reconstruction took place,” as reported by the BBC.

There has also been another parallel analysis floating around among some anti-Zionist Trumpists. The theory is that this is just another one of his “4D chess moves,” trying to overplay the Zionist act in a manner that would appear too extreme even for Jewish supremacists such as Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir.

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The Biblical Model: Joshua and More

However, this idea of forced population transfer actually predates Trump by many centuries. In fact, it is grounded in the Bible that is revered so greatly by both Jews and Christians (or “Judeo-Christians“).

In the Biblical narrative, the notion is often associated with the Assyrian Empire, which used to exile entire populations and replace them with more docile peoples in an attempt to prevent potential future rebellions.

The Jews themselves have been on the receiving end of such policies, as can be seen from 2 Kings 17:24:

The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns.

But the Jews adapted this tactic from their former oppressors and employed the very same methods themselves, as can be seen from the way Joshua dealt with the Canaanites. We read in Joshua 23:4-5:

Remember how I have allotted as an inheritance for your tribes all the land of the nations that remain—the nations I conquered—between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. The Lord your God himself will push them out for your sake. He will drive them out before you, and you will take possession of their land, as the Lord your God promised you.

This is significant because the book of Joshua, along with its military doctrine, has been the defining text for modern Zionism, particularly Zionist settlement projects. This is something that has been studied extensively by Rachel Havrelock in her 2020 book, The Joshua Generation: Israeli Occupation and the Bible (published by Princeton University Press).

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In her introduction, Havrelock notes how diaspora Jews underutilized the book of Joshua, as they didn’t want to alienate the host societies. However, now that they are the dominant group within Israel, they once again feel confident enough to (quite literally) weaponize it.

We read on page 4:

In his speech, Netanyahu introduced the quotation with assurance that the message “has steeled our resolve for thousands of years,” by which he meant the Jewish people during thousands of years of oppression. In fact, the militaristic mantra of conquest was largely neglected by Jews and Jewish interpreters because Judaism developed in the Diaspora, where notions of conquest and homeland held little relevance and posed a danger to social stability in Christian and Muslim lands. Moses, of course, remained central as a figure of liberation and law giving, but Joshua held little appeal, particularly after Christian interpreters claimed him as a forerunner of Christ. Joshua assumed new importance in early Zionism as a self-sufficient leader who brought the People of Israel into an era of national independence and waged a prolonged war with the natives. As I will show, the book of Joshua became a foundational text in modern Israel in contrast to its marginal status in Diaspora Judaism. In the meantime, I would correct Prime Minister Netanyahu’s timeline and point out that the biblical directive, “be strong and resolute, neither fear nor dread them,” has steeled Israeli resolve in the context of ongoing war with Palestinians.

Further on, she reminds us that, within the popular Zionist imagination, the Palestinians are Canaanites. We read on pages 174–175:

Where Ben-Gurion convened scholars to pursue an emergent, distinctly Israeli mode of interpreting Joshua, the settlers take biblical verses and scenarios as directly relevant and applicable to the contemporary landscape. There is a tendency, in other words, to circumvent the mediation of interpretation and fuse the landscape described in Joshua with the contemporary West Bank. For example, neighboring Palestinians are often labeled as Canaanites (or Ishmaelites or Amalek) and the biblical instruction to destroy them understood as sanction for contemporary violence.

READING: “Destroy Amalek!” The Religious Origins of Zionist Genocide

The book is a sobering read as it very clearly demonstrates that a convergence of Biblical studies, Jewish supremacism, and Zionist expansionism threatens the existence of Palestinian nationhood as a whole. Palestinians are not only considered to be Canaanites and even Amalekites, but they are also associated with the ancient Philistines (thus the name “Palestine”) and are therefore also prophesized to be exiled and destroyed.

We read, for instance, in Jeremiah 47:2–4:

Thus says the Lord:

 

“Behold, waters rise out of the north,
And shall be an overflowing flood;
They shall overflow the land and all that is in it,
The city and those who dwell within;
Then the men shall cry,
And all the inhabitants of the land shall wail.
At the noise of the stamping hooves of his strong horses,
At the rushing of his chariots,
At the rumbling of his wheels,
The fathers will not look back for their children,
Lacking courage,
Because of the day that comes to plunder all the Philistines,
To cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper who remains;
For the Lord shall plunder the Philistines,
The remnant of the country of Caphtor.

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Furthermore, the annihilation of the Philistines is also linked to the destruction of Gaza. We read in Amos 1:6–8:

Thus says the Lord:

 

“For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four,
I will not turn away its punishment,
Because they took captive the whole captivity
To deliver them up to Edom.
But I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza,
Which shall devour its palaces.
I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod,
And the one who holds the scepter from Ashkelon;
I will turn My hand against Ekron,
And the remnant of the Philistines shall perish,”
Says the Lord God.

We can see that the entire concept of forced exiles or enforced population transfer is not something that is alien to the Biblical imagination, especially through the book of Joshua. Along with his Zionist overlords, Trump probably also appeals to his Christian nationalist audience, as well as Evangelical boomers.

You’ll often hear or read, here and there, that enforced population transfer or politically-motivated resettlements are “against international law,” but it would appear that the Judeo-Christians believe themselves as being above such laws, in fact, perhaps any laws whatsoever.

Hear me out. Maybe, just maybe, the Judeo-Christians should amend, revise, and reform their Bible so we could all have a possible chance at world peace?

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